Eew! These people eat rats and cats: The Systematic Exclusion of Tribal Consumers in Subsistence Marketplaces

There are numerous forest-dwelling tribal communities around the world who are entirely reliant on hunting and gathering to meet their subsistence needs. Increasingly, government-imposed bans on hunting are rendering their traditional ways-of-life illegal. Consequently, these forest-dwelling tribal communities have been pushed outside the forests and forced to interact with the formal monetary-economy to meet their subsistence needs. Often, tribal consumers face exclusion in the formal marketplace owing to different forms of discrimination. The discrimination often arises because their traditional practices of eating wild animals are perceived to be “uncivilized and primitive” by the world outside. Such systematic marketplace exclusion seriously threatens the well-being of tribal consumers. In this research, we undertake a community action research project with a tribal community from south India. The goals of the project are to a) understand the unique threats to well-being faced by these tribal consumers and b) co-create transformative solutions with the community that enhance well-being.